Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because is public domain. I am grateful.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 55

I want to love my neighbour not because he is I,
but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one’s self, but as one loves a woman,
because she is entirely different. If souls are separate love is possible. If souls are united love is obviously impossible. A man may be said
loosely to love himself, but he can hardly fall in love with
himself, or, if he does, it must be a monotonous courtship. If the world is full of real selves, they can be really unselfish selves. Love desires personality; therefore loves desires division. It is the instinct of Christianity to be glad that God has broken the universe into
little pieces, because they are living pieces.

The oriental deity is like a giant who should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to find it; but the Christian power is like some
giant who in a strange generosity should cut off his right hand, so that it might of its own accord shake hands with him. We come back to the same
tireless note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which
separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls. But according to
orthodox Christianity this separation between God and
man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to
love him. All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an immense melting-pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively from
that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword. The saying rings entirely
true even considered as what it obviously is; the statement that any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic
fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed. Yet there is
another and yet more awful truth behind the obvious meaning of this utterance of our Lord. According to Himself the Son was a sword separating
brother and brother that they should for an eon hate each other. But the Father also was a sword, which in the black beginning separated brother
and brother, so that they should love each other at last.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.